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bit
Historic photos
Another.
New. Hire.
Hut! Hut!
Parking garage.
Fires!
To '89
BLOODLINE
FLASH BACK
ROADS
cross
The story
on Story
Wacky WHY
Bunny
WELOVE
Patty
Stogner
How does a girl from Leitchfeld, Ky., with a Baptist upbringing become a Playboy Bunny? "My
husband and I were broke," says Patty Stogner of their life with two kids in Chicago in the 1960s.
He worked in an offce testing metal and suggested she try for a waitress job at the original Playboy Club. The naïve Stogner, barely out of high school, was shocked to discover what the uniform
involved — a satin strapless corset, bunny ears, a bow tie, cuffs and cuff links. "Not trying to be
funny, I asked where the rest of the shirt was," she says. Once dressed, she was whisked off to meet
the boss man. She says Hugh Hefner told her not to be scared. "Hef said, 'You will love Playboy, and
Playboy will love you,'" she says. "I felt I had a really bad night if I didn't make $500 in cash. And that
was in the '60s." She would come home, toss the evening's tips onto the bed and make snow, err,
money angels in joy. For nine years (a longer-than-average Bunny career) she served some of the
club's high-profle patrons, from Judy Garland to members of the Rat Pack.
After the gig was up and her frst husband died, she moved to Louisville with her kids. Stogner,
now 73, has created a medley of Playboy-inspired art: oil-painted canvases of Hugh Hefner smoking
a pipe, of his silk pajamas, of Bunnies. Her paintings, which cover subjects beyond Playboy (puppies, for instance), regularly sell at Point Gallery in Prospect and South Bayly Boutique in Crescent
Hill. She's completing a novel and has written two yet-to-be-published short stories, including "Memoirs of a Playboy Bunny." In the piece, she recalls a time from a couple of years ago when a young
man servicing her car noticed the Playboy decal in her window. He was delighted to meet a real
Bunny. "There is still an intense interest in Playboy," she says, "and I'm convinced it will never die."
— Mary Chellis Austin
betting window
PORTRAIT
z
THE
BUILDING
21Q's
21 questions
THIS MONTH IN
PRESS RELEASES
Stogner, in
orange, in her
Bunny days.
Back to school
JUST
SAYIN'
the
And More!
8.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 13